5 comments:

I believe that you're right--it makes it difficult to imagine a world without "evil."

Also--I think pain and destruction might be an important part of self-actualization. Sometimes it takes great trauma to throw the things we really value in life in to stark contrast against the things that matter for little at all, but take up a significant amount of our time and energy.

I remember once watching a TV show where Charles Manson was staring at the camera and saying "You need me" and in the sense that our culture needs what he represents - the villain... the evil... the bastard... we need a place where we can pin our pain and fear, a place to identify as wrongful and bad. If only to exorcise our own inner shadows...

evil is as necessary as good and both are oscillating poles... we can not have one without the other

I think I disagree, or at least that's not what I was going for. I don't think "evil" is necessary, but that presence is necessary, and that sometimes presence can be painful. Believing that "evil" is necessary is exactly the attitude that leads one to think war is unavoidable and so the best we can do is sanitize it and make it as palatable and painless as possible. When we equate pain with "evil", we're more likely to try to avoid those forms of presence that might cause us pain, things like connection, risk, challenge. Meanwhile, "evil" becomes easily excused as long as it doesn't hurt so much, or as long as the hurt is obscured or not immediately obvious.

I don't agree with the dualism of seeing "good" versus "evil" in the world. There is balance and imbalance, but pain and struggle, destruction and chaos, creativity and joy, are diffuse and much more complicated than that. To be engaged is a struggle, but not one that should be avoided, and it is not the kind of thing that can be made magically easier without losing something of its significance.